Comment 3 for bug 982938

germanium's load average fluctuates between around 6 and 21. You can see from other startups that it sometimes takes a minute or probably more to initialize:

2012-04-12 19:40:13 INFO Creating lockfile: /var/lock/launchpad-generate-ppa-htaccess.lock
2012-04-12 19:41:08 INFO Starting the PPA .htaccess generation

That falls near the end of a several-hour period of roughly twice normal load, so it was probably exceptionally bad.

Assuming you're referring to this particular bit:

2012-04-12 19:35:49 INFO Committing transaction...
2012-04-12 19:35:53 INFO Finished PPA .htaccess generation
2012-04-12 19:36:33 INFO Logging INFO and higher messages to /srv/launchpad.net/production-logs/lp_publish/generate-ppa-htaccess.log
2012-04-12 19:36:33 INFO Creating lockfile: /var/lock/launchpad-generate-ppa-htaccess.lock
2012-04-12 19:37:14 INFO Logging INFO and higher messages to /srv/launchpad.net/production-logs/lp_publish/generate-ppa-htaccess.log
2012-04-12 19:37:14 INFO Creating lockfile: /var/lock/launchpad-generate-ppa-htaccess.lock
2012-04-12 19:37:35 INFO Starting the PPA .htaccess generation

.. it seems unlikely that it managed to start in just 20s this time. It's more likely that 19:37:14's failed to obtain the lock, and the 19:37:35 message is in fact from the 19:36:33 run.